Notes to Myself

This is written haphazardly as I think about them, the order is roughly accurate and spans between birth to 18. This is a word vomit and I spent no time really doing any form of copy editing. What you see is what I wrote the first time

I have no idea who I am in the grand scheme of things. Since I was 16 I was never alone. Never allowed a moment of quiet. Never allowed to my own body. They would yell at me, berate me, hate me, and make me hate myself. I could never discern reality from fiction. I frequently had delusions of things that were never and could never be. I was a king, I was a vampire, I was a hero, I was popular. I was happy person.

From a young age I was doomed, I was born to an impoverished family. My mom was young, 18. My dad, I do not know. I do not know his age, I do not know much of him at all to be honest. He was never really in my life outside of a handful of traumatic incidents.

My mom and dad, both mentally unwell. Both suffering schizophrenia. I didn’t know it at the time, but I saw the results. Battling addiction after addiction. Police constantly at our door, to break up another fight, to arrest my dad again for having psychotic break, to be given the same stuffed animal every time. DCF was useless, again and again they put us into foster homes. Each time left us more traumatized than the last. From beatings to sexual assaults. No home was safe. Only to be sent off again to the house we had been taken from.

I was kidnapped by my own father, brought to his new girlfriend. My parents had been going through a nasty custody battle. I was at the heart of it. My dad took me from my school, with the promise of seeing a new movie. I got to see that movie. Then months later, I was finally allowed to go home. I will always defend my dad as being a very kind man, a man who doted on all of us kids. He loved all of them. He would do no harm, he was just ill. When he found out that my half-sister (through him) was sexually abusing me. He lost it, brought me home, and turned himself in. I do think he ever forgave himself. The few times I’ve talked to him, the guilt in his voice when he talks of the past is palpable.

I do not know the details, but I know that it was not long for him to be let free. He tried multiple times to get forgiveness, to spend time with me and my siblings. I could not forgive him and I still haven’t. Not because he is at fault, but because he represents trauma at its highest level.

Finally, we were taken away. My dad had vanished, off to get cigarettes and milk. My mom snapped and tried to kill herself. I remember this day, vividly. I came home from school, my siblings crying. Mom had been gone since I left for school at 0730 that morning, my middle sister was able to get out. She had not returned. Both toddlers, both hungry and in desperate need of a change. I did what I could, I fed them what I could, and I changed them the best I could. I waited for her through the night.

I remember waking up to the sound of my youngest sister, screaming, she needed food. I didn’t know how to prepare a bottle, I had none from the fridge left. I panicked, my mom was still not home. I called my grandparents, I had their number memorized from all the times I had to call before. It still is, I will remember that number for the rest of my life.

The rest is a blur, my grandparents came to pick us up, and when they did the police were with them. I had no idea why, I did not understand what was happening. I didn’t know that the entire night my mom laid in the woods out back, having tried to kill herself. Had I not called, she would have died. She had been found at the brink. I haven’t forgotten this, I can not forgive myself for waiting. I was 5. All of this, before the age of 5.

My grandparents got us, all three of us. My life did not get better. They were militant, strict. It was in their nature, born from family tradition. A tradition I will never uphold.

I am the oldest of three, two sisters below me. I struggled with attention, I never felt like I had enough. I was lonely. I was isolated from everyone. Blamed for everything. I was never allowed to have an accident, everything I did was intentional. No mistakes for me, no sir. I was a good soldier, a perfect soldier. I woke up everyday at the same time and did my chores. While not an exhaustive list, I did the dishes, did the laundry, and cooked for my siblings. No food for me, only for them. I could only eat at school, if I could afford it. I was never given money for food, told to figure it out.

I started to lash out at school, I was scared and lonely, no one was listening to me when I told them. I had been forced into seeing a psychiatrist and a therapist, but even they didn’t listen. I was told I was a bad kid, that I was a problem. That I was really just seeking attention. I just wanted to be loved. I had never had it. I had been left alone my life, treated like a burden, thrown from home to home. Even in the home I knew I was going to be in for the rest of my life, I was alone and unloved.

I went through school, through my childhood, with no friends. Well, not no friends, but it was basically none. I would gain them and lose them all in the same breadth. Relationships a mystery to me, why could others do this, but I couldn’t? Anxiety was creeping. Anxiety was overwhelming. It never stopped. It hasn’t stopped. It has just evolved to be violent, to the point of intentionally distancing myself from those I love in response. I would rather not be in their life than ever hurt them, I would rather run than have them run first. I would rather lose someone because I did it, than them leaving my life because I was the issue; because I hurt them.

I started to see things, my hands on fire, people in my room, faces in the windows, and other oddities. They scared me, but no one listened to me when I told them. I was lying, I was just making things up, it was my imagination; it was my fault. I could see them though, I could see things others couldn’t see and they could see me. They could hurt me, but never did. They just looked at me, stared me down, never blinking. I saw them, they wanted to harm me. No one believed me. I have lived with this since I was 10, them looking at me.

Life was miserable and being a teenager didn’t fix this. I was drugged up with every prescription imaginable, and not one was to actually help me. It was just to make me comply. I still saw them. I still struggled with anxiety. I still hurt. I just couldn’t emote, I couldn’t properly express anything. Happiness or sadness, it didn’t matter, I felt nothing. At least on the outside, I could still feel it on the inside, I still suffered inside. With no way to express myself. I had no friends, I was found to be weird. I started to develop a frenzy, a mania, even with my medications I would still work myself up into a frenzy of activity. Of talking. Of movement. I couldn’t keep still, I couldn’t keep quiet. I was given medicine for ADHD and told to stop being a bad kid. To behave, to comply. It was my fault I was alone, that I had no friends. I was to blame. There was no excuse. Sit down and shut up.

One day, at 16, I heard them. Voices calling for me, calling my name, responding to my conversations, never shutting up. No one heard them, no one believed me. So I kept quiet, I never told another soul. I learned that this was the only way to survive.

They never stopped, I couldn’t sleep. My already suffering grades fell further. I barely made it out of high school, despite claiming otherwise. I could not let others know I suffered, even if it was a lie. I was tired, they never stopped. I was worthless, I was not worth the space, no one should ever deal with me, I was wrong, I was broken, I was not allowed to be happy. I was not allowed to be Human.

I never slept properly again, even today. I tried to get rid of them. I turned to heroin, I turned to alcohol. I slept, but I did not sleep well. It was all I needed. Just to sleep. My life revolved around getting as high and drunk as I could to sleep, to shut them up. They came back louder and louder. I never could get them to stop.

There is more, but this has gone on long enough. When I feel like it I will add more, I will make a new post. When I feel like it.